Oak Grove undersized running back Jim Furlow overachieves

View full sizeJim Furlow ran for 200-plus yards in a game eight times and scored three or more touchdowns 11 times in his career. (The Birmingham News/Joe Songer)

Take
what life gives you. Run with it.

That's how Oak Grove
senior Jimnarrius Furlow lives.

"Life is not what is
handed to you," he said. "Living is about doing the best you got with what life
hands you."

The way he's carried a
football is the easiest example of him doing that across his 18 years. Furlow,
who goes by "Jim," started as a 5-foot-6 freshman. He was about 150 pounds, but
former coach Keith Luker built a game plan around him. He responded with 192 rushing yards in his first game as a featured
back.

The 5-foot-7 fullback finished
this fall as perhaps the top player in school history. Furlow carrying the ball
35 or 40 times a game has been Oak Grove football since 2008. He ran for
200-plus yards in a game eight times. He scored three or more touchdowns in 11
of his 37 games.

He finished his career
with 5,537 rushing yards. That ranks 21st in AHSAA history despite missing four
games as a junior with a knee sprain and just two playoff trips.

According to AHSAA
records, only 16 players have scored more than his 74 career touchdowns. That's
one score every 11 carries.

"Best I ever saw," current
head coach Tom Hannah said. "Every running back that follows after him here has
a lot to live up to. Leadership. Dependability. The kind of kid Jim is that
walks out of the locker room into the schools halls and around his neighborhood
will be hard for anyone else to live up to."

Furlow is one of 96
student-athletes who will be honored tonight at the 27th annual Bryant-Jordan
scholarship awards banquet at the Birmingham Sheraton ballroom. The $2,500
student achievement scholarship he earned as a regional winner has little to do
with a career that ranks him statistically as one of the top 20 running backs
in state history.

But the determination that
powered all those carries does.

Furlow does not have any
football scholarship offers. Size is one reason.

So is a top gear that's
merely good, not great. The bright student pushed his GPA past the 4.0 mark by
taking AP classes this year. That, plus the 22 on his ACT, earned an academic
scholarship to West Alabama.

He plans to walk on with
the football team. Don't be surprised if the future engineer earns an athletic
scholarship.

"That will just be Jim
being Jim," Hannah said. "Wait till they see him carry the ball and what he can
do. Just wait. They will see."

Jim being Jim

Bryant-Jordan student
achievement winners traditionally have endured hardships. In Furlow's case, he
overcame extreme poverty and family troubles that required him to be removed
from the care of his parents when he was a young teenager.

But that's not the best
way to measure his life.

He won the football team's
"110 Percent Award" for the third time after this season. He's the only
three-time winner of that honor. He's also the only multiple winner of the
school's citizenship award.

"He won those things
without people knowing his real story," Hannah said. "Those were awards he
deserved just for the way he handled himself every day."

The walls of every high
school field house are telling. There are inspirational messages from SEC head
coaches. Schedules are common. The bulletin board by the vending machine at Oak
Grove also has an emergency response plan.

Each player has a job
should something terrible occur. Furlow's role is the first listed. It is
clearly the most important.

He's assigned to help his
head coach locate the AED device. That's the automatic emergency defibrillator
that can save a life in the event of cardiac arrest. The Tiger who totes the
ball on fourth-and-1 is also trusted with that.

"He's the fastest," Hannah
said. "He's one of our smartest
and most dependable. He never missed a practice so we know he's here every day,
too."

Furlow's lows

Hannah has been coaching
and teaching for 21 years. He believes Furlow is as fine a young person as he's
ever laid eyes on.

"He has every excuse to
amount to nothing," Hannah said. "To be what we call 'just plain sorry' around
here. He's the opposite. Jim the
person is more incredible than the athlete. He has every excuse to fail, but
won't use a single one. What he grew out of and grew up to be is what made him
a special kid."

Furlow was removed from
his parents' custody when he was 13. He was in seventh grade when the Jefferson
County Department of Human Resources came. There was concern about neglect,
according to Dana Waldrop, a counselor at the high school who first met Furlow
when she held the same position at the elementary school.

Furlow still respects his
family so he shares just two stories of the difficulties he and his three
sisters went through. The youngest of those, Jamie, has cerebral palsy and is
wheelchair bound.

"My cousins adopted me and
my sisters because my momma and daddy were on drugs," Furlow said. "Each year the living conditions got worse. It got to
a point where we were living in a small trailer and ran an extension cord
across the street to my uncle's house for lights."

He was homeless at times.
His parents would disappear for extended stretches, he said.

The simple resource of
warm water to wash his face before school was a luxury.

"We had to go to this old
abandoned house to use their well," Furlow said. "We used their well for
drinking water and other stuff. Back then I used to wish all the time I was
older. So I could get a job to help. So we could all live better than that."

Furlow has been in the
care of Denita Smith, an older cousin on his dad's side, since he was 13.

Family members reunite
sometimes, but rarely. Furlow said he's been around his mother or father and
all three sisters maybe 80 days in the past five years.

Why me? Why my family?
Furlow had those questions.

"Maybe living through
those hard times was God's way to make sure I'd grow up and amount to
something," he said.

April 9, 2011

The hearts at Oak Grove
High are heavy today. It was one year ago when Tyler Evans lost his life in a
car accident. Evans, 17, would have started at tackle last fall. He was the
passenger.

The driver survived in
what Hannah calls a "terribly tough day for our community."

Furlow was a good friend.
Evans used to clip the articles from the paper that detailed Furlow's many big
games. His mother, Alicia, shared what Furlow would tell her lost son about
those nights.

"Jim would always say he
didn't want to hear about it," she said. "He always said football was about a
team. If his team wasn't blocking, he couldn't get any of those yards and
touchdowns."

Furlow, just being Jim,
asked Alicia if she could walk with him to the field on Senior Night last fall.

"I wanted her there," he
said. "She deserved to be a part of it. It felt right. Tyler and his family needed to be a part of that
night."

Alicia is quickly moved to
tears when that gesture comes up.

"Such a great kid," she
said. "I learned earlier this year what he'd been through. It was an honor to
not only give him his senior blanket, but also represent him as his family. Jim
just means the world to me."

Furlow's parents could have
escorted him. But they'd already disappointed him too much, he said, by never
coming to watch him play.

Think of the parents who
burn up vacation days just to watch a son with limited talent on Friday nights.
The hope is their boy will get in during a blowout for throwaway snaps. They
never miss a game.

Furlow, maybe the greatest
player in Oak Grove history, never had a parent or sibling cheer for him on any
Friday night.

"When I finally gave up on
them coming, I didn't let it worry me," he said. "If it did, I would let our
team down. But it did bug me. ... I'd look into the stands, hoping they were
just running late. It would've meant so much if I could've looked up and saw
they cared enough to watch me play.

"I'll be honest: That made
it hard to keep my head in the game. It hurt a lot."

Think of all the yards the
undersized back ran for between disappointed glances into the stands. When
Alicia Evans does, the reaction is clear.

"It absolutely breaks my
heart," she said.

Finding a home

Waldrop, the school
counselor, remembers when she met Furlow, who was in fourth grade at the time.
There was a book fair that day. Furlow flipped through young reader novels
while his peers looked at sports books heavy with pictures. She made sure he
left with a bag full of those books that day.

"I have never in my 21
years as an educator and counselor experienced a child coming from his
circumstances who has risen to the peak of his ability," she said. "His
self-discipline and determination truly amaze me."

Others have helped, of
course.

While he's extremely
thankful for Smith's family and the kindness his older cousin displayed in
opening her home to him, he mentions another family first. That's his Oak Grove
team.

"The happiest moment of my
life was when we beat Fayette County this year," Furlow said. "It was up-all-night-joy-beyond-joy.
It is going to be hard for anything to top that feeling."

Despite what life handed
him, he still found a place to call home.

"Oak Grove High School is
my home," he said. "The guys I played with and my coaches. This school has been
a great home for me."